Archive for the ‘news’ Category

Lately, I’ve been trending more toward The Guardian over the NYTimes. Reason? Several–cultural accounts are more interesting, but also foreign reportage seems more complete, less recycling of the expected.

I find the conclusions obvious. But the point is not simply to go local–that desire frequently papers over the pollution, for instance, caused by local trucking, as well as the possible inefficiencies ad hoc local production can get away with, as its small scale can escape scrutiny, but for policy that rewards *long-term* and *sustainable* efficiency. That is, for policies favouring modern sails and related wind technology for ships, for instance, or dirigibles for aircraft, provided those are actually more efficient to run, and also to make. And for policies that tax irresponsible practices–you know, the ones that brought us the 20th century and now this century’s rising sea of mess. (When we tally the real costs of supposedly cheap commodity energy, the expense is profound and yet to be fully plumbed. We are still paying for that litre of fuel and will be doing so for a very long time.)

Like this:

I could have posed almost any other twitterstorm from delong (J. Bradford DeLong, professor of economics at UC Berkeley) or any recent (as in the last 10 years) blogpost from Krugman or from Mark Blythe or from Mark Thoma or Simon Johnson–and so on. I read these and so many more. But I must surely be as isolated as the rest, be suffering from the affliction of hearing only my own opinions echoed (more richly) back. Because I think: How can the world continue in its crazy way–specifically the Austerian path chosen by the Wise Men and Women of Europe (with power, alas)–when they have nothing intelligent to say for themselves, to justify their egregious and consequential actions? In the face of the mountain of rationality and powerful argumentation, of reason and economic science, of math and data and simple brute logic–how can the Austerians, and even not just in Europe, do what they persist in doing?

Is it just so simple as: punish the sinner? And implicitly reward the righteous? Is it so *stupid* as that? It’s as if the lack of a gold standard only goaded these to fabricate the next best thing, a fictional island of intrinsic value that must–contradiction!–be preserved from the volatility of the market that it has committed itself to.

It’s madness.

(It’s almost as mad as the Koch brothers spawning/sponsoring Cain: he’s an idiot and a fool, and yet you would think that a dyad and a group as rich and powerful as the Koch would have chosen a better squawk and UT and a more intelligent campaign plan than we see with Cain, whose chances of doing well in primaries, let alone even gaining the nomination are as laughable as he is. So then one wonders: Why? Why him? Why not, say, the governor of Wisconsin?)

i find it misguided that most of the US and Ontario make it nearly impossible and illegal to obtain raw milk. As the data indicate, far more danger lies in the practices and equipment used to further process milk (into cheeses, etc.) than in the source. And if there are doubts: look to France, where raw milk is easily obtained in many stores. There is no significant die off of French milkdrinkers (milquetoasts?). There are the occasional outbreak of this or that bovine disease in humans. But these are rare. Rather, there is a strong and rigorous interest in keeping things clean.

By outlawing raw milk Ontario shifts the burden of responsibility to the dairy farmer and away from the real source of anxiety, the mass-industrial processing of milk into consumer products.

Like this:

And…. Welcome to the future. The issue is not just that hell has come to us, a reward for our impatience, but that there will soon enough be wars–diplomatic, silent, and also noisy and bloody–over the waterways now opening. Sporadic news on this. But not enough, as the present drowns the news of near tomorrow.

The radio journalist’s call to “squash cyclists” were for nothing short of murder. And he was and is not alone. Here in Toronto, the lack of consideration shown to cyclists, including those who commute and deliver parcels by bike, not by drivers but by the mayor and his cronies, and the preference instead shown for cars over and against cyclists, is appalling. But in keeping with what Ford wants for Toronto: to drive it into a ditch, to make it not the shining beacon of modernity and cosmopolitanism but an abscess.

Even in Tory led London, as in so many other cities, the trend is to favour the bike over the car, the ped over the wheel. This is a logical and worthwhile goal, and it even increases the urban business. Peds and cyclists are likelier to stop and shop. But in Toronto, the fat mayor has decreed otherwise.